Local slants on the classic beer and whiskey combination

BY Julia Sexton

High-brow meets low-brow in The Tapp’s Boss Hog cocktail.

Even though Boilermakers are enjoying a current fad, cocktails that unite beer and spirits are not a modern invention. According to Esquire’s resident cocktail historian, David Wondrich, a recipe for what we now call a Boilermaker (a glass of beer with a shot of whiskey dumped into it) made its written debut in James Wiley and Helene Griffith’s popular bartending guide, The Art of Mixing, back in 1932. Wondrich reports that the drink was then called a Block and Fall because you’d drink two, then walk a block and fall. Given its mythic potency, it’s no wonder that the Boilermaker is on a cultural loop and resurfaces with about the same frequency of, say, tweezed eyebrows or high-waisted pants.